As the wind fills your footprints

‘The last one is yours,’ I said, holding out the plastic box reluctantly.

A month earlier, I had walked in the living room and announced we were going to London – out of the blue, like all great ideas. ‘Um, why?’ had asked my flatmate. I had shrugged. My head was full of eastern metropolises and sand deserts and northern lights, but our wallets were empty; London was as good a replacement as our budgets could afford.

When it comes to filling in for the rest of the world, London does surprisingly well: it is one big sampling tray of a city, each bite-sized bit with its own flavour – not quite a mouthful, just enough to get a taste. It’s a Frankenstein made up of a patchwork of small towns. It lacks the grandeur of an ancient capital, or the sheer scale of natural wonders, but it’s a miniature world of its own, chaotic and very much human sized. It hadn’t taken us long to fall in love.

We had spent half of the month’s rent on overpriced hostels and surprisingly cheap transport, juggling our way through trains and planes and room reservations. We had thoroughly consumed our soles around and under the city; we had lazed around Camden Town, bought street food from the market, soaking in the outrageous colours, and loitered outside the Tower because we couldn’t and didn’t want to pay the entry fee. We had caught the same ferry up the Thames twice just to see if the bloke talking us through his version of London from the water would say the same things. He did, but it was enjoyable both times.

By the last day, we knew the tube map well enough to give directions, we could barely lift our feet off the ground, and we were thoroughly bankrupt, a last tenner mostly lost to buskers - the music of London is made up of lots of voices, each standing at a corner or in an underground passage, ridiculously talented, unexpectedly beautiful.

We had bought ourselves a box of chocolate biscuits with the very last of our funds – 20p off at the Tesco by Covent Garden -, and caught the tube back to Piccadilly Circus. I remember thinking that the best description of the square is that if the world had vertices, Piccadilly Circus would be one of them. Things pool in from the streets, and whirl about for a little under the screens – and then they’re gone again, but you don’t quite notice because more have replaced them.

So we sat there, watching the movement, eating our biscuits on the steps of the memorial, and we realised that, after all, sitting on top of the world is free.